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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27146977">Seraphine Lore 2.0</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarletsblood/pseuds/Scarletsblood'>Scarletsblood</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>League of Legends</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Lore Rewrite, Plot twist its Seraphine, The major character death is no one important or beloved, technically</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:02:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,996</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27146977</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarletsblood/pseuds/Scarletsblood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>So you know how it looks Riot put two hours top into Seraphine's Runeterra lore? Well I decided to fix it. Fix it so they can keep the 'story' they've decided on but you know written by someone who read their lore. </p><p>Riot may not care about Skarner and the bracken lore but I do.</p><p>Inspired by an inside joke between me and my mate. "What if Riot actually meant Seraphine to be a psychopath and didn't forget their own world-building."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Seraphine Lore 2.0</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Fyi first few paragraphs are the original lore from Riot. Then it diverges into my stuff. </p><p>I own nothing here.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In Piltover, where anyone’s dream can become everyone’s progress, a star is born.</p><p>As a child, Seraphine always loved music, especially her father’s lullabies. The songs were beautiful, but sad. He’d brought them up to Piltover as he and Seraphine’s mother--two lifelong Zaunites--sought a better life in the City of Progress.</p><p>Leaning out the window of their hexcoustics workshop, where broken sound tech was made to play again, Seraphine sang along with the streets. The shanties of the Sun Gates, the whistling of apprentices, even the melody of conversation--in a bustling city like Piltover, she was never alone.</p><p>Over time, Seraphine realized she could sense songs too private, too personal, for any ordinary person to hear. And as she grew, so did the intensity of her gifts. She heard every person’s soul, loving or cruel--turning the streets she’d once loved into an overwhelming cacophony of conflicting desires. How could she make sense of the voices if none of them harmonized? Some days, she hid shivering in a corner, hands over her ears, unable to hear herself above the chaos.</p><p>Seraphine’s parents had left everything behind so she could be born in Piltover; they couldn’t bear seeing her struggle. Scraping together their savings to purchase a shard of a rare hextech crystal, they crafted a device that dampened her magical hearing. For the first time in years, there was silence.</p><p>Within that quiet, though, Seraphine heard something--someone. The crystal had a consciousness, born of brackern blood. The voice was kind. In a hymn of distant deserts and ancient conflicts of ancestors, a thousand years of history sang in unison.</p><p>Seraphine, awed, asked for guidance. Overwhelmed by the yearnings around her, she worried she may have no song of her own. What if she was merely the voices of others?</p><p><em>“We are all forged through others’ voices,”</em> the presence sang back.</p><p>And slowly, she learned to manage the noise. The voice helped Seraphine understand how to resonate with a crowd, to sing with them, using her dampener less each day. The first time she performed in front of an audience, testing her skills, she was nervous beyond words. But she kept singing, and the crowds swelled.</p><p>Now a budding teenager, she walked merrily through the evening streets, humming the soul song of those she passed, by while returning the waves of those who recognised the Piltover Songstress. The ever-present bracken soul helped guide Seraphine in stringing the songs together forming them into a perfect harmonic melody. </p><p>Though in recent years she noticed the advice given by the bracken had become... sadder. </p><p>Unbeknownst to Seraphine the bracken’s song hasn’t changed. Merely the ever tiring soul is slowly lifting the veil of its cries, now that their voice is grasping her power better and maturing. The bracken couldn’t blame or force their pain onto a child, no matter the crimes of others before her the young songstress didn’t need or deserve the full suffering of their kin. But for now they settle on weaving comfort into the songs the child sings, soothing the endless agony of their kin as the mortal’s machines drain away their life.</p><p>Soon Seraphine will be old enough to understand. Soon she’ll be old enough to tell. Soon she’ll be old enough to help.</p><p>Perhaps then the agony can end.</p><p>And perhaps with Seraphine it would have. </p><p>Alas that is not this story. Alas the city of progress is not free of the shadows.</p><p>Seraphine’s fame shielded her in the light and eyes of the public, but in the growing shadows of night, outside of view… no one could protect her.</p><p>Only two streets from home she was distracted by noise in an off-street just out of view. Approaching without thought Seraphine saw them. A group of Zaunites, all with unmasked glee in their eyes. One eagerly kicks the stomach of a fallen man beside him, while another holds a well wrapped object, no doubt stolen from the fallen man.</p><p>Unable to mask her gasp, four sets of eyes fall on her.</p><p><em>“Run, escape,”</em> whispered the bracken.</p><p>Stammering out apologies Seraphine turns to run, but her fear left her frozen too long, an arm grabbing her wrist pulling her back.</p><p>“You will be,” sneered one of the men. “What have you got there?” Sneered another.</p><p>Attached to her waist the bracken used the aura of the dampener to reach its brethren, gathering more of their power together, enough at least to defend their young voice.</p><p>When one of the men reached to grab the dampener, the bracken released the accumulated power. It was enough, blasting all four the men away from the songstress knocking all her would be attacks out as they made contact with the nearby wall. </p><p>Reaching for her friend Seraphine was concerned the presence had faded, the bracken soul within exhausted by the power they released, wiping decades off their life and leaving their crystal dim. </p><p>…For the moment.</p><p>Checking the fallen man first, Seraphine's eyes are caught on shining silver. The previously tightly wrapped object revealed from its holder’s collision with the wall.</p><p>A silver sceptre with a mosaic black shine. It's hilt is adorned with drips of crusted crimson leading back to a clawed fist clenching its brother in a crushing embrace, hints of darkened red can be glanced between the fists fingers. </p><p>Still too young and too naïve to ignore her natural curiosity, Seraphine shimmies over, a hand reaching out to touch the flawless metal. The voice of the exhausted bracken is too quiet to warn her in time.</p><p>Not that it would have mattered. </p><p>It's over so quickly a scream never made it past her lips.</p><p>The moment her hand landed on the sceptre, the once mistaken carapace crashed through her, overtaking delicate skin, replacing petite hands with powerful deadly-tipped claws. Her baby blue eyes are swallowed by molten silver streaked with black, until only pupils remain. And finally, from beneath candy pink hair two flattened horns rise, the same shimmering grey and black of sceptres hilt. </p><p>Holding arms in front of herself for the first time in centuries, Tahir eyes herself confused.</p><p>The moment the child touched her she knew they would be an easy host to overtake, too easy, the brat would never have survived the transformation let alone her full take over.</p><p>But.</p><p>Yet.</p><p>Here she stands. Whole for the first time in centuries. In the body of a weak host that still shows no sign of disintegrating upon itself.</p><p>Hearing a quiet hum vibrate through her core she picks up her sceptre, nudging the unconscious mortals around her. None make a sound not even a grunt, yet the hum remains.</p><p>Focusing, Tahir finds the sound not only vibrating deep in her magic core, but in the buildings, lights and… the object still attached to her waist.</p><p>Inspecting the object, her hosts memories tell her is a ‘dampener’ Tahir can’t help but cackle. It’s not a hum.</p><p>It’s a scream.</p><p>A trapped soul suffering. </p><p>No. </p><p>Not one. </p><p>Thousands upon thousands overlapping each other. Connected in their suffering. </p><p>Souls made of magic so similar to her own, so similar to depths of a lost home. Her core noticing the compatibility between the two magics naturally began leeching the power away. No wonder this form is lasting longer than it should, her cores using the power of the souls around her to fortify it.</p><p>How... beautiful.</p><p>Shifting through memories and quiet screaming of the souls, Tahir learns of her hosts innate magic. The ability to hear the songs of people’s souls and even the trapped soul of every bracken this city is built on.</p><p>Unlike ‘Seraphine’ Tahir is not a naïve child and easily pieces together the cause of the brackens pain. The more their power is used the more of their life is stolen, until eventually they die.</p><p><strong><em>“It doesn’t have to be that way.”</em></strong> She purrs.</p><p>Promising nothing that would cost herself, Tahir makes a deal with the bracken souls.</p><p>Teach her Seraphines form, her songs and her story and in return she’ll ensure decades extra life for those of the bracken nearly tapped out.</p><p>Knowing the option of freedom, they cultivated for years is forever gone, the bracken concede. Anything to at least lessen the piercing screech of their kin who approach eternal death.</p><p>It takes the night. But the bracken talk her through recreating Seraphines form. And aid her in learning the songstress’s powers.</p><p>Something she tests on the mortals left around her with an added something of her own design. </p><p>The foolish child had no idea of her true power. </p><p>Tomorrow a story of a murderer who bursts ears and liquifies eyes will spread. While later at that investigation, a man with starred eyes will walk up to a warden and attempt to slice his throat clean through, and when they inevitably attempt to apprehend him, he'll take his own life with that very knife. </p><p>The bracken lead Tahir to Seraphine's home, where they refuse to provide further aid until she’s started her part of the bargain. Knowing their use outweighs their costs, Tahir ignores them, focusing inwardly on fogged memories she allows to guide her on appropriate reactions to the brat’s parents. The mistakes she makes, the parents brushes off on the 'trauma' of being lost all night.</p><p>Millennium ago, the audacity of these gnats trying to lecture her would have left them retching up their lungs.</p><p>But now?</p><p>Centuries trapped in silent darkness has taught Tahir the value of patience.</p><p>She has a plan. A long con that will secure herself in Runeterra again. Cement herself deep enough the trickster will be incapable of ever uprooting her. </p><p>Using the bracken souls that litter this city she’ll fortify her host and expand her power.</p><p>It doesn’t take much to persuade the parents to help. Together they dismantled the dampener and repurposed the crystal to power its opposite--a platform that would amplify the soul songs. Allowing her to fully extend her sense, fully grasp the individual notes of souls and with her greater knowledge than the child knew she possessed, reach deep inside her audience and twist the songs to follow her tune.</p><p>Humouring her deal with the bracken she sneaks into workshops and homes with fading bracken, replacing the near dead with stronger more lively souls. A tedious task but worth the benefits, knowing the deals the only way to avoid their kins dying screams, the bracken willingly funnel their power to her. Freeing up her core to focus on more important duties, such as familiarising itself with the hosts innate magic and expanding her songs influence, while the stage’s- the parents stupid name- bracken amplify her song across the city. </p><p>Standing atop her stage- her pedestal singing to the cheering crowd, her mind flashes back to eons passed, when once she stood on another pedestal, beneath a golden disc in the light of the sun which illuminated her brothers and sisters before their armies and their people.</p><p>A blink dismisses the image. These aren’t the armies and citizens of Shurima... Their all dead. </p><p>Here Tahir is not revered as a warrior goddess, but the cheers are similar enough.</p><p>The worship is similar enough.</p><p>Patience and allies. Two rules she must remember to live by. Patience and allies…</p><p>And if she remembers those rules. Perhaps soon she’ll have a home again.</p><p>Slowly she watches her song spread through the crowd, unifying them all to join into the same tune. While deeper down the tune subtly twists their singular soul to fit her design. For now, the songs are only tuned to promote herself as the star of both Piltover and Zaun, filling minds with inspiration to connect and join the two cities with someone they can trust, someone to turn to, to lead them together in equality. Someone such as her. </p><p>Perhaps eventually she'll gain more than a united home. </p><p>Perhaps she'll gain herself an Empire... </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Just in case anyone reading this read my drabble on the Darkin and is worried its literally just this. Dw its not. This was inspired by a joke between me and a friend. Cuz the female Darkins on my mind and Riot unintentionally made Seraphine psychopathic enough she deserves place with them. Which led to 'OMFG! What if she's the female Darkin'.</p><p>Basically imagine this as Tahir (Riot won't give me the female Darkin so I made my own) is the same except here she never got the host I had planned for her and took over Seraphine instead. </p><p>Plus ideas how Seraphine could have been her own Champion instead of Sona 2.0. Riot seriously she could have been siren like. WTF were u doing?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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